STARVATION LAKE

Ten years after it disappears beneath the icy waters of Starvation Lake, a beloved hockey coach’s snowmobile is found in another lake.

Jack Blackburn had it all. His players adored him, and his success in bringing them closer and closer to the Michigan championship put his adopted town on the map, brought a welcome influx of new investment capital and made him the first citizen of the hockey-mad hamlet. Now the snowmobile on which his assistant Leo Redpath watched him sink into Starvation Lake has turned up five miles away. Did it drift there through an underground tunnel, or is there a more sinister explanation? Gus Carpenter, the former goalie who blew the state championship game for Blackburn’s finest team, would seem the logical person to investigate. But Gus’s experience digging up juicy stories for the Detroit Times has come at a high price, and not even his secluded gig as associate editor of the Pine County Pilot can prevent his scandalous past from resurfacing. Gus’s struggle with this new mystery is complicated by his old rival Teddy Boynton’s attempt to put Soupy Campbell, Gus’s best friend, out of business, and by his painful discovery that all the people he’s been closest to, from his mother to his old girlfriend to his society columnist, have been hoarding secrets that have made them strangers to him.

Gruley’s debut is generously plotted and rewardingly solid on character and atmosphere, though most readers will be ahead of Gus every step of the way.